


stars with people names

by PandaFlower



Category: Naruto, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 2 fools in love going on a quest to find one's body, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, But Mostly Comfort, Force Spirits, Hypothermia, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Sleeping Beauty Elements, a bit of hurt/comfort, but not dead, one (1) Star Trek ref let's see who catches it, the sheer yearning when you cannot touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24924016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaFlower/pseuds/PandaFlower
Summary: “Having second thoughts?” Tobirama’s low voice was loud in the hush, brazen and unapologetic, just like him.Kagami turned to look over his shoulder at the washed out Force spirit, his closest companion of two years now. Had been since a lonely Jedi Knight had poked around the archives and stumbled across the strangest lightsaber he’d ever seen, complete with its own supposedly-not-dead, grumpy guardian. “Just wondering if the med kit I packed will be enough. I’ve no idea what condition your body will be in.”Tobirama rolled his eyes at the old argument. “It’s perfectly fine. I would have felt if it was near death.”“A thousand years is a long time to be separated from your body, Master Senju,” Kagami pointed out. He let his voice become impish. “Who knows, it might just be a brain in a tank—”“Finish that thought, I dare you.”In which an intrepid Jedi Knight quests to reunite an ancient Force spirit with his body. Also they're in love.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Kagami
Comments: 12
Kudos: 293





	stars with people names

The dark planetoid was as devoid of welcome as anything would be after having been abandoned since the Ruusan Reformation, regolith stirring sluggishly around his boots, bound by the artificial gravity from the generator drilled under the surface. That it still worked was a testament to Jedi terraforming engineering, once long ago repurposed to build bases and outposts any and everywhere they could manage in the onslaught of the last great Sith war.

The artificial atmosphere seemed to quiver to Kagami’s senses— or perhaps that was his own bated breath.

Cautiously, he stepped up to durasteel doors, skimming a hand over a surface untouched by elements that never existed on this chunk of rock. It was hard to imagine they were over a thousand years old. Had stood for a thousand years guarding one secret.

“Having second thoughts?” Tobirama’s low voice was loud in the hush, brazen and unapologetic, just like him.

Kagami turned to look over his shoulder at the washed out Force spirit, his closest companion of two years now. Had been since a lonely Jedi Knight had poked around the archives in an effort not to dwell on things that couldn’t be helped and stumbled across the _strangest_ lightsaber he’d ever seen, complete with its own supposedly-not-dead, grumpy guardian. A saber that now dangled from his belt, right beside his own. “Just wondering if the med kit I packed will be enough. I’ve no idea what condition your body will be in.”

Tobirama rolled his eyes at the old argument. “It’s perfectly fine. I would have felt if it was near death.”

“A thousand years is a long time to be separated from your body, Master Senju,” Kagami pointed out, turning away to examine the doors, fingers tracing for the unlocking mechanism. He let his voice become impish. “Who knows, it might just be a brain in a tank—”

“Finish that thought, I dare you,” Tobirama warned, reaching around Kagami to point out a panel hidden in the shadow of the doorway. “Hand there. The mechanism is designed to be shifted with the Force, feel for it.”

 _How very esoteric,_ Kagami thought even as he reached out with his senses, _and not at all an effective means against the Sith._ How curious considering this base’s origins.

“The B’omarr Order has some very interesting philosophies on the strength of an isolated mind,” he continued, deliberately not looking at the disgruntled scowl he knows will be there lest he give himself away by laughing. It’s okay if Tobirama suspects he’s being teased, just as long as Kagami doesn’t admit to it. “It presents some interesting parallels with the way Jedi eschew attachments to strengthen our connection with the Light side of the Force.”

Whatever rude comment Tobirama makes about the sanity of storing one’s brain in a jar thankfully gets lost when the doors groan open, ancient gears shifting reluctantly.

“Ah, surprisingly good condition.”

“As it should be,” Tobirama ‘hmphed’. “Not much point building a secret hideout if its going to collapse on your secrets.”

“One could argue otherwise if such a situation served your purposes,” Kagami pointed out lightly, stepping into a dark hall, the floor swallowed up by shadows thick and ancient. It only took the space of a moment before dormant mechanisms sluggishly stirred to life, lighting the path ahead.

“There,” Tobirama breathed behind him, close enough that if he’d been flesh and bone Kagami would have felt the breath on his ear. Kagami restrained a jolt, shooting Tobirama a brief look for sneaking up on him like that. 

Tobirama just smirked back.

Kagami huffed but didn’t call him on it, cautiously moving down the corridor. He’s curious about about the design; a narrow hallway is not the smartest choice for a place that might be attacked, the whole place would turn into a kill box. He’s starting to suspect it _was_ meant to bury its content should the worst occur. But were that the case the question remains; was it to protect said contents, or destroy them?

Is the lack of booby traps so far an indication of one or the other?

At the end of the hall was yet another door, just as tightly sealed as the entrance. Kagami feathered a hand tentatively over it, searching for the opening mechanism. A touchpad lights up dully at a touch, followed by the unwelcome sound of the entrance door sealing shut abruptly. Instantly, the hall feels suffocating.

“Tobirama?” Kagami murmurs, frozen. Forgetting, for a moment, the safe distance of _Master Senju._

“Calm,” Tobirama soothes, a spectral hand wrapping weightlessly around his nape. “This is just a pressure chamber. This base predates the artificial atmosphere by a couple decades, once the sensors finish processing the atmosphere levels we can continue on.”

That helped. This planetoid was as far out on the edge of the Mid Rim as you could get and still count as Republic space, certainly far enough out from civilization that the odds of Kagami being able to send a distress signal with just a comm were disconcertingly low. Starving to death in a locked room— well. Definitely in Kagami’s top ten worst ways to die.

The touchpad lit up brighter under his fingers and the door hissed as released, stale air whooshing out. Kagami took a cautious breath, hand going to a little black box clipped to his belt and switching it on. After a tense moment the little indicator light glowed green as the atmosphere analyzer declared it fit for a Human.

“That’s one less worry,” Kagami sighed in relief. He’d brought oxygen masks but there was a difference between ones you used in low oxygen conditions and ones you used medically, and he’d gambled and only grabbed the medical kind when the surface proved breathable.

“Built to last, I told you,” Tobirama said, stepping past him into the chamber.

Kagami, curious and dutiful, followed him in. He couldn’t quite tell what the chamber had been meant for, it was huge and empty and barren, but it opened up into three more hallways which seemed more pertinent than any speculation. “Do you remember which way?”

Tobirama paused, brow furrowed. “Right, I think,” he said at last.

“You sure?” Kagami asked. 

Tobirama turned back to scowl out him in all his shimmery blue glory. “I would not say so if I had doubts.”

“It’s just that you don’t sound very sure—”

_“I’m sure."_

Kagami holds his hands up peaceably, smiling. “Okay, right it is.”

The right hallway was a mess of doors on either side, lights flickering feebly. “Storage,” Tobirama explains. “You can explore later, not sure if anything’s left in them.” he adds. The end of the hallway dipped down a step and ended in an elevator that had Kagami breathing out nerves as he stepped inside. A thousand years was a long time without a maintenance check. But apparently this too was operated with the Force; a complex mechanism of locks and magnets nudged open and closed, this way and that, to manually lower the lift.

“Isn’t this a bit _too_ slow for a base that might see an attack?” Kagami asked afterwards, rubbing the tension out of his brow. “That’s not in any way efficient enough for an evacuation, let alone the skill needed to pull it off in a timely fashion. What _was_ this base actually for?”

“Once upon a time?” Tobirama smiled, a bit wry. “This whole place was a secret stash for Jedi artifacts that were of no use for war but too important to our culture to risk destruction or corruption. It was hastily occupied as a temporary base during the Last Great Sith War but mostly as an outpost to lay low at before heading else where. I… am not sure why my suspended body was put here. I speculate that perhaps I was hidden for my protection and my protectors died before it was safe to retrieve me, but at this point I will never know.”

There’s a wealth of deeply etched sadness behind that statement that Kagami aches to soothe. But Tobirama wears his grief like an old scar long sealed, too accustomed to mind it overmuch save when the twinge and pull of it reminds him it’s there. He doesn’t need Kagami to be gentle and coaxing, he doesn’t want gentleness and coaxing _from_ Kagami, not right now. Possibly not for a while. 

But what he does need, Kagami can provide him.

Closure.

He follows the Force spirit down another corridor, until they come to a halt in an archway, the room within finally failing to light up. Kagami can’t help the gasp he lets out at the sight of the enormous sarcophagus dominating the room. It’s huge and imposing, a block of rough hewn black stone, upon which lay a carved effigy of a man. He looked to have been Human, and tall in life, with tattooed lines etched in the stone of his face on his cheeks and chin. He wore a Jedi’s robes and his hands were folded—

No, not folded. Kagami stepped closer, brow furrowed. The hands were curled over his sternum, wrapped around thin air. Empty. 

Or perhaps, he thought, one hand going to the spiked lightsaber at his belt, meant to wrap around that which symbolized a Jedi’s very life.

“Not a very good likeness,” Tobirama sniffed. 

“I don’t know, I think they captured your perpetual grumpiness quite accurately,” Kagami replied absently, reaching out a free hand to skim over stone fingers. 

“I’m not grumpy!” Tobirama spluttered, and Kagami startled, looking up with suddenly wide eyes. Tobirama jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you start,” he said threateningly.

Kagami grinned.

“Kagami, _no,_ ” Tobirama insisted, scowl so deep it was edging past intimidating and right into comical. 

Kagami grinned wider. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re thinking it!”

“But I didn’t say it out loud so it doesn’t count,” Kagami said, grin turning smug.

The Force spirit fumed in thwarted silence. Out of respect for their imminent goal, Kagami refrained from teasing him further and turned to figuring out how to open the sarcophagus. A seam all the way around indicated a base and lid, but trying to lift the lid with the Force almost yanked the whole thing up. It was locked from the inside.

Kagami knocked on the stone, frustrated. 

Some Jedi could render a machine into parts and back again with the Force, manipulate currents of data on a computer with just a gentle brush of their mind. That was so very much not one of Kagami’s talents who’d always favored more biological skills. Tech that wasn’t built with Force manipulation in mind left him stonewalled. Give him raw weather any day, Kagami at least knew what to do with _that._

“Any luck on your end?” Kagami asked.

“I sense my body inside.” Tobirama grumbled. “ _Not_ dead, like I told you. I am also getting the shape of the locking mechanism, but…” he trailed off, visibly perturbed.

“But?” Kagami prompted, his own brows furrowing to match the Force spirit’s.

Tobirama met his gaze.

“I think the inside is also frozen in carbonite,” Tobirama finished, voice steady for all the rising alarm Kagami can see in his washed out face.

Well. That’s…

Okay. Kagami closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. This wasn’t the end of the world. They could haul the sarcophagus out to the ship and back to the Jedi Temple to get some specialized help. Those elevators had to have been sturdy enough to get the heavy thing down here in the first place so Kagami wasn’t worried about that. And Tobirama’s body was in no more danger than it already was, they had _time._ Nothing had changed, and Kagami made sure to tell his companion so.

No need to panic.

“And anyway,” Kagami added, carefully pushing the sarcophagus out in to the hall with a flex of though and the Force, “we probably shouldn’t have tried to open it until we got back to the ship in the first place. No telling what condition your body is in.”

“While I do not recall being frozen grievously injured, a thousand years as a block of ice surely can’t count as _un_ injured,” Tobirama conceded. A quick, sideways glance, then added himself, “And besides, it would be _very_ embarrassing to come back from the dead only to die again on the spot.”

Kagami had to stop pushing the sarcophagus up the hall for a moment to laugh hard enough he clutched his sides.

Because he could picture it! Right down to the annoyed, indignant scowl etched into Tobirama’s face!

...not that it would actually be funny for real. 

Kagami would be devastated. And more than that, really goddamn guilty for fumbling that badly for the rest of his life.

So it’s just as well they avoided all that, and can laugh at what will never be!

Going up in the elevator took a bit more effort going down, but not egregiously so. Kagami did end up squished gracelessly against a wall while Tobirama snickered at him perched atop his own effigy so. There was that. If Kagami wasn’t mostly certain this ridiculous person was the love of his life he’d— probably still put up with his antics fondly, but not _that_ fondly. The annoyance would be far more weighty!

Tobirama was _so_ lucky to have him around, and one day Kagami would tell him so. At length. 

But more importantly, Kagami was going to get so much mileage watching Tobirama figure out how to be a fleshed entity again. He’s betting on him running into at least one door, if not a wall, after being able to just walk through them for so long. And he absolutely _has_ to be there the first time Tobirama tries food again, sense memories faded so fast, no way in hell did the poor guy remember what all his old favorites actually taste like anymore.

“What do you want to do once you’re back in your body?” Kagami asked, steadily shoving the sarcophagus up the entrance hallway.

“The usual things, I’d imagine,” Tobirama replied. He was standing in the doorway, surveying the landscape suspiciously. One of many habits, Kagami knew, that Tobirama kept from the madness of the last great Sith war and never bothered kicking.

Kagami snorted, “Don’t be so mysterious. I _mean_ did you ever make plans for what you wanted to eat first? Have a real nap for a change? Cuddle?” He added half-jokingly. In all likelihood, Tobirama might actually _want_ some kind of physical touch. Skinship starvation was a mind- and spirit killer and Tobirama wasn’t one with the Force yet, he had a living being’s needs still.

Kagami suspects his ability to lie dormant for centuries at a time saved his sanity.

Tobirama glanced back, mouth curled softly with some emotion Kagami couldn’t quite make out on his washed out face. “Something like that.”

“Ugh, fine, be that way,” Kagami huffed, shoving the sarcophagus out the door in a cloud of loose regolith. “I’ll find out later.”

“Undoubtedly,” Tobirama agreed dryly. Kagami had a sneaking suspicion he was being teased.

Outside the confines of the bunker, Kagami took advantage of all the space to lift the sarcophagus entirely, floating it carefully up the ramp and settling it in the cargo hold. A bit cramped but they would be home soon enough. Once everything was secure, Kagami prepped the ship for lift off. Exploring the whole bunker would be a job for a whole team of jedi, probably an archivist or two. He and Tobirama were strictly search and rescue here.

It was comfortably quiet in the pilot’s cabin while Kagami navigated away from the gravity well of the planetoid and out into open space. There was a hyperspace jump point just twenty minutes from here, and there were roughly five or six jumps from the outside of the Mid-Rim to Coruscant depending on the rotation schedule of various celestial bodies. It was a good time of the year to make this trip.

The ship vibrated quietly as it made the jump to hyperspace, and Kagami breathed a quiet sigh as he set the navigation to autopilot. 

They were one step closer.

He found Tobirama sitting once again on his effigy, face drawn into a laser focus as he fairly glared at his own stone face. His hands lays flat, on the effigy’s stomach, fingers twitching now and again, reminding Kagami for all the world like a tooka that couldn’t decide whether it was feeling energetic enough to pounce or lazy enough to just knead and settle. And just like a tooka, as soon as Kagami drew near Tobirama abandoned whatever had occupied him so thoroughly in favor of a new thing to pay attention to.

“Any luck?” Kagami rested a hip against the sarcophagus, taking this chance to examine it in better light.

“I’m reluctant to delve too deep,” Tobirama replied in his usual fashion, answering a yes or no question with an explanation, “it’d be terribly inconvenient—if rather quick from my perspective—if I were to abruptly reintegrate with my body and leave you in the lurch.”

“That would be distressing, yes,” Kagami agreed.

“However,” Tobirama continued, slanting a quick glance sideways, “I do admit some… longing. Impatience.”

Force, Kagami never imagined he _wouldn’t_ be. He doesn’t even think he could begin to imagine what Tobirama was feeling right now, the older Jedi was so very reserved—not closed off, if anything Kagami found him surprisingly inviting—but controlled. A deceptively placid surface over sharp rocks below. His lightsaber was similarly incongruous; gunmetal gray and decorated in vicious spikes, fitting for a soldier born to endless war, yet the blade was a Sentinel’s yellow and the heart that wielded it found its deepest joy in teaching and crafting. Tobirama was a man of so many contradictions, yet balanced them as skillfully as if the line he walked was as wide as a street, sure footed and self-knowing. Kagami was… drawn.

Kagami laid a hand between Tobirama’s ghostly ones, knowing trying to touch would be futile. “That’s understandable, and I feel similarly. Just hang in there, okay? We’re almost there.” 

A quicksilver sideways glance again before the corners of Tobirama’s mouth softened. It wasn’t quite a smile, but then, Tobirama smiled with his whole body. All the harsh lines softening, the rigid posture relaxing, the edges of his eyes crinkling warmly. It was so enticing Kagami had to look away after one, shamefully long glance.

His gaze ended up caught once more on the effigy’s clasped hands, curled around empty air. The sight of those empty hands struck Kagami as incomplete somehow. Deliberately so. Everything else about the sarcophagus was consistent and seamless, why then the empty hands?

Kagami reached for the spiked lightsaber hanging from his belt, curious. Would it fit?

“Hey, was this meant to hold your ‘saber?” he asked, gesturing to the effigy’s hands.

Tobirama leaned over to squint at them thoughtfully. 

“Possibly,” he nodded. “I’ve no idea why they would’ve separated the two if that were the case.”

“Huh.”

Kagami unclipped the lightsaber and held it up, eyeing the space between the effigy’s hands and it’s sternum. He slipped the ‘saber under and with a quick shimmy to get the angles aligned, slotted it right into stone palms.

There was a loud clink as stone fingers tightened.

“Um,” Kagami said intelligently.

The lid shifted up and ice cold gas rapidly vented out the seams, filling up the room and sending Kagami stumbling back with startled swearing.

“Um,” Tobirama said right before he winked out of existence.

“Tobirama!” Kagami cried, heart suddenly in his throat, waving away the chill gas with a brisk sweep of the Force and hurrying over. He hooked his fingers under the lid and _heaved._

A living man lay gasping and shivering inside on a block of still melting carbonite, barely conscious. Kagami swore and reached in to haul him out, stumbling onto his ass from the surprising _solidity_ of the man. A quick mental tug and a blanket came sailing over, Kagami wrapped it about the man tightly, and for the first time got a good look at him.

He was—huh. Handsome, certainly, that was obvious even as a spirit but Kagami was going to have to mentally revise his estimate of him being Human to Near-Human. Stark white was not a natural color for a Human in their prime. And— the tattoos. They were barely noticeable before when he was washed out and uniformly blue-ish, the red now curling across his face bright and vivid and oh so noticeable and Kagami traced the path of one down a pallid cheek with a thumb. Then he jerked back half-guiltily, thinking about touch taboos in other cultures about markings, how Tobirama needed Kagami to have his head on straight right now so he didn’t _die._

Kagami swore his way to the little room that counted as a medbay, then swore his way again to the ‘fresher so the lukewarm air of the sonic shower could raise the barely conscious Jedi’s body temperature at a safer rate than the heated blankets. And also get him clean and dry. Then he wrestled him into an undersuit to preserve his modesty and what little warmth he’d managed to retain.

“Kriff, kriff, kriff,” Kagami chanted as he piled blankets on Tobirama with one hand and stretched to reach the medbay computer with the other, frantically tapping through the database for post-carbonite treatment.

Treat hypothermia symptoms? Check. 

Lungs? _Kriff._ Kagami unpacked the oxygen rig, the big one meant for sustained used, and wrestled it over Tobirama’s head. The other Jedi’s lungs had been out of action a _very_ long time, they were at risk of collapse.

Vaccinations? What—

The blood drained from Kagami’s face and he scrambled for the hypos.

Vaccinations were recommended after sustained carbonite freezing because bacteria would have evolved or cycled strains while you were unable to build resistance through exposure. Tobirama had been frozen for _a thousand years._

_He had no resistance to any modern strains._

Acclimation was going to be hell, if it didn’t kill him first.

No kriffing wonder he’d been left on a planetoid with no life and not much for bacteria to thrive on.

Force, if only they’d done this at the Temple, they had a full medbay! But no, Kagami followed a hunch without considering if he should! Stupid!

He had to dig through the blankets to find a limb. One. Two. Three. A dozen hypos for the most common illnesses. Then a slather of bacta to seal out contaminants for good measure.

“The way you swear one would think you weren’t happy with me,” came a rough voice.

Kagami lunged for the head of the bed. 

“Tobirama! You’re okay!” he cried. A breath. “Wait, no, don’t talk! Your lungs—!”

Tobirama rolled pretty red eyes far more dryly than someone probably suffering the worst bout of carbonite flu in the history of the Republic rightly should. “Thirsty,” he croaked defiantly.

“Oh.”

Right, right. Dehydration.

Kagami unhooked the oxygen rig enough to snake a tube under the mask so Tobirama could suck sips of medical grade hydrating solution while he hooked up a saline drip.

That seemed to be about the extent of Tobirama’s strength as he passed out shortly after.

Kagami settled the mask back into place with utmost care. Spent a good ten minutes just breathing and _feeling,_ letting it all flow out into the Force.

Then he went to go contact the Jedi Council. They’d need a sterilized pod in the medbay prepped, among other things.

* * *

“So how are you feeling?” Kagami asked several weeks later, once the Healers deemed it safe enough for Tobirama to receive visitors without risking him contracting some deadly strain that made him bleed from the eyeballs or anything else equally gruesome.

“Pondering how best to gird myself for the inevitable interrogation,” Tobirama replied, because questions with binary answers were anathema to him. Kagami loved him. “I am a living relic of history and no doubt the archivists are sharpening the knives for me as we speak.”

Kagami snorted. He wasn’t exactly _wrong._

“Then again,” Tobirama continued, shuffling to the side a bit so Kagami could sit beside him, knocking their shoulders together, “I am also a relic of war and a time of great Darkness; I am certain the Council will wish to get a feel for my mental state, along with the assistance of the Mind Healers who are now allowed access to me.” A thoughtful pause. “I have no objections to this. It will not be pleasant but the aid in spiritual recovery will be… nice.”

“Nice,” Kagami echoed. “Certainly.”

“As well,” Tobirama shot him a quick sideways glance, the corner of his mouth twitching mischievously, “the Healers tell me so long separated from my body has left my connection to it a bit tenuous.”

Kagami did not see what was so funny about that, and told him so.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Tobirama complained, face falling into the grumpy lines Kagami was more familiar with. “They recommended I find someone willing to partner with me for meditation exercises until they’re satisfied I’m firmly anchored where I ought to be.”

Another sideways glance.

“Tobirama,” Kagami said with rather more calm than he felt. Slowly, just in case it was more forward than Tobirama was willing, Kagami reached for the other Jedi’s hand and laced their fingers together. “Are you asking me?”

Tobirama gripped back.

“I’ve been wanting to hold your hand since the second week I knew you,” is what Tobirama does say. “I wanted to touch minds with you. I knew no matter what shape your mind takes I will find it beautiful. I hope you feel the same.”

This handsome man was going to be the death of him.

“I’m going to interpret that as a yes,” Kagami said through a suddenly dry throat. “And I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I will also interpret that as a yes.”

It was. 


End file.
